La Luna Blanca

About

This piece continues a series of new works written every year for Choralation since the choir's inception. Each new piece has tried to do something different - in scoring, mood, or compositional approach. The choir of 2019 included a fine young accordion player and conductor Rowan Johnston suggested a work for her instrument with the choir.

The text is from the Colombian poet León de Greiff (1895-1976), although he was of Swedish and German ancestry. He was part of a movement aimed to reclaim the already established European standards of art and literature and give it a modern and local character. He spent much of his life as a civil servant and later as a diplomat.

The poem is a simple evocation of a lost or distant love. The first two stanzas are more or less the same, and the phrase "tan lejano" (so far away) recurs several times. Much of the time the music maintains a static texture, through which the accordion weaves its lines. The music rarely rises above soft dynamics.